milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Kaylee is sitting at the bar with a cookbook and a beer.

Because there's a nice kitchen at her disposal at Southdown Abbey, and no doubt the Shepherds wouldn't mind if she did a little bit of cooking practice. Especially if they got to eat the results.

And if she's a little bit distracted by the whole getting-married-in-a-few-days thing...suppose that's forgivable.

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He looks at her, his expression serious, and nods.

"People said it was the government, and some people thought it was God or the dark man or some such thing. I don't really know what it was, except that everyone seemed to get sick of it. Far as I know, some idiot in a bunker broke a vial and then carried it on out to everyone else."

He pauses in his writing, and looks up at her with sympathy.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to upset you or anything--like I said, it's nice to know there's an earth where that doesn't happen."

"Oh, no -- I'm not upset, it's just -- we're used to hearin' about plagues and whatnot way far out on the Rim, on the border planets -- and it's awful -- "

She stops.

"This has got to be the stupidest question in the 'verse, but -- are you okay?"

Sometimes Kaylee gets rambly.

Nick doesn't mind rambly.

And he really, really appreciates someone asking if he is alright, even though it reminds him of Fran again, and that reminds him of Stu and Larry and Glen, and they all remind him of Tom.

M-O-O-N, he thinks, unhappily. That spells end of the universe.

But he gives Kaylee an encouraging smile and the circle of thumb and forefinger.

A-OK.

"Never got sick," he writes. "Some of us didn't. I'm stuck here, though. Miss my friends."

"Shi a -- I mean, of course." A very slight smile. "Sorry. Mandarin slips in sometimes -- everybody can speak both. But -- I mean, if you want to talk about it -- what're they like? Your friends?"

Sometimes talking about home makes it worse.

Sometimes, though, it makes it better.

He waves a hand, and nods.

"I'll look out for that, then," he writes. "I can't read anything but English, more's the pity. Never got to that level in my correspondence courses."

And he bites on the end of the pen, thinking for a long moment, his gaze very far away, before setting pen to paper once again.

"They're good people. They've been working to organize the survivors into a proper community again, but it's uhill work. Stu's in charge, or at least he's the head figure. Good man. From Texas. He and Frannie took me in, a little. Think Fran decided I needed a mother, or something.

"Larry's from New York. There's a man here I met who reminded me a lot of him--the bartender, Eddie Dean? Makes me wonder if all New Yorkers are the same after all (ha ha)."

This one takes a while, and he bites his lip, hard, while writing.

"I guess my best friend is Tom Cullen. He and I traveled together just after the plague, and he saved my life once. It was just me and him for a long time."

He hands the note to Kaylee, watching her reactions closely.

Kaylee takes the note, and reads it -- and smiles a little at the part about Fran, and smiles more at the part about Eddie.

She puts the note on the Bar. "They sound like such good folks. And -- not that I got a bunch of New Yorkers to make reference to, but -- Susannah -- Eddie's wife -- ain't exactly the same as he is. Not to say she ain't friendly, but -- I'm assumin' Larry's funny, like Eddie?"

And maybe a little scary, but Kaylee's not going to get into that part. Presumably Larry is also not a gunslinger.

Nick makes a face, but it's a fond one.

"He's a fool, sometimes," he writes. "Or acts like one. But there's something in Larry that's like biting on tinfoil. He's tough. He's friendly the way Eddie is, I guess."

He shrugs. It's hard to describe. And if Nick knew what a gunslinger was, well--

Of all of them, Larry might be the most likely to be one. Nick thinks about the unforgiving glint in his eyes, and sighs, a little.

"And they are. Very good folks."

"It's good, knowin' folks from all over. You get to see things from all kinds of different ways." A small smile -- also a little faraway, and also fond. "It's good havin' folks to travel with."

She looks at Nick.

"They'll be okay."

She hopes.

It's what she does.

He nods, firmly.

Writes.

"You travel a lot? Must, with your ship and all. Guess your crew's sorta like the people I went to Colorado with."

Kaylee nods. "A little, maybe -- we got a captain and the first mate -- they fought in the war together. And then there's Jayne. And whatever jobs got to get done -- they're the gun hands. Then there's the pilot -- his name is Wash, and he's married to Zoe, the first mate. And then there's Inara, who's a Companion -- an ambassador, kind of, and other things, too. And then there's Simon, who's a doctor -- " A small smile, there. " -- and his sister River, and then there's me. I'm the mechanic."

Nick watches attentively, and nods with a smile.

"Sound like an interesting bunch. Are they all from Earth, too?"

Kaylee laughs -- but not in a mean way. "Oh, hell no -- folks left there a couple hundred years ago. We're all scattered out over the 'verse now. I'm from a little moon called Three Hills originally."

(M-O-O-N)

Nick looks incredulous, scribbles a note.

"But you speak English? And...Mandarin?"

He looks at her, questioningly

She nods. "Yep. Last two big countries on Earth-that-Was were China and the United States. So...everybody had to know at least some of both, and most folks were fair well bilingual. And it just kind of went from there."

He nods. It was still the Soviet Union, when he came from, but this isn't hugely surprising news.

His next note is short.

"What happened?"

"Everything...just got too crowded. Used up all what there was. So...folks just left. Got on a bunch of ships and went out. And we found a new system, and fixed it up so it was as much like Earth-that-was as we could get it, and...settled outward from there."

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